Master My Garden Podcast
Master My Garden Podcast
EP267 - Ben Raskin Head Of Agroforestry At The Soil Association Chats Trees as Allies: Soil Health and Garden Resilience.
Ben Raskin takes us on a journey through the peaceful coexistence of trees and crops in a revolutionary approach to growing food. As Head of Agroforestry at the Soil Association and author of eight books, Ben shares how his 12 years as an organic vegetable grower evolved into a passion for integrating trees into horticultural systems.
The conversation reveals surprising insights that challenge conventional growing wisdom. Did you know vegetable beds sheltered by trees can be 4-5°C warmer than open ground, potentially extending your growing season by weeks? Or that many leafy crops actually prefer partial shade, especially during increasingly common heat waves? Ben expertly explains how trees buffer extreme weather conditions while fostering rich underground fungal networks that transport nutrients across remarkable distances.
Practical applications abound for gardeners of all scales. The humble wood chip emerges as an unsung hero – from its use as a soil amendment that boosts fungal populations to its potential as a sustainable peat-free propagation medium. Ben's firsthand experiments reveal that ramial wood chip – material from young branches – offers particular benefits when applied directly to soil without composting.
Beyond techniques, Ben shares a compelling vision for food system resilience in an uncertain climate future. Through his work at the Soil Association, he bridges the gap between environmental campaigners pushing for rapid change and farmers navigating practical economic realities. His perspective on diversity and resilience offers a hopeful path forward: systems that prioritize sustainability may yield less in optimal years but deliver consistently when conditions deteriorate.
Whether you're a home gardener curious about food forests or a market grower seeking climate adaptation strategies, this conversation provides both philosophical framework and practical tools for working with, rather than against, natural systems. Ready to reimagine your growing space with trees as allies?
If there is any topic you would like covered in future episodes, please let me know.
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Until next week
Happy gardening
John
how's it going everybody, and welcome to episode 267 of astromagarden podcasts. Now, this week's episode is one I've been looking forward to for a while, so it's, um, yeah, glad to be joined this week by ben raskin, who's head of agroforestry with the silo association. He's also the author of many books I'd probably find out that number quite soon and there's books like the, the wood chip handbook, uh, silva horticulture, there's books on agroforestry and so much more. Obviously the silo association as well. We can chat a bit about that. So that's going to be really interesting.
Speaker 1:Quite a trusted body you know in in the uk and ireland and, as I say, there's loads of kind of potential avenues here. We're going to center the episode, I guess, around silva horticulture, which is the incorporation of trees into crops, and where that will become relevant, I suppose, in the garden situation is in the likes of food forests, which are starting to become popular, and I suppose there's a bit of a lack of understanding of food forests and how they operate. But, you know, silvohorticulture is going to be kind of a similar vein, so we'll get some insight into it. Soil health, I know, is also something that Ben is quite, you know, quite a strong advocate for so, again, something that we talk about a lot on the podcast. So, yeah, there's loads of potential avenues here and, ben, you're very, very welcome to master my garden podcast hi, john, thanks so much for having me on yeah, it's.
Speaker 1:Uh, it does as I said. There's loads, loads of potential avenues. Um, you have many books out. I wasn't quite sure the figure there seems to be a lot is. Do you know that figure off hand or? Uh, eight eight books eight and it's everything from like your.
Speaker 2:Your most recent one, if correct me if I'm wrong, is the wood chip handbook no, the most recent is the silver horticulture one that I co-wrote with andy dibbon okay, who, if you haven't yet had on, I would recommend getting him on, because he's amazing as well right so yeah, so my, my background is is horticulture, so I was a veg grower for 12 years or so, um, and they say it's only in the last probably 10-15 years that I've started to focus more on the trees and the agroforestry stuff.
Speaker 1:So yeah, and when you say you're a vegetable grower, like what kind of scale was it or what kind of format were you growing in?
Speaker 2:so a range but sort of up to about 10 acres. 12 acres, that was sort of the biggest I was growing um, but I started I ran a walled garden um in sussex for a while um, I worked for horticultural college up in north wales um, so yeah, a few few bits and pieces so small it's small to medium scale selling into, you know, box schemes, farm shops, a bit of wholesale, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you've always grown organically. Am I right in saying that?
Speaker 2:Yeah Well, actually the walled garden, my very first job, despite my best efforts. We weren't quite organic. They couldn't stop spraying the paths. But paths run fast, stepharts, we weren't quite organic. They couldn't. They couldn't stop spraying the paths. But apart from that, yeah.
Speaker 1:So so that's kind of your. Your grounding in horticulture is that sort of uh, organic ethos and so on, and I did see a video on on your instagram profile earlier of you were sort of given a not not a history, but you were saying that you came from organic horticulture and then you transitioned into silva horticulture and the incorporation of trees into that and that's, I suppose, what we're going to mostly center the episode on, but we will talk about other things like soil health and so on. So maybe give us a little bit of the story from you know the the organic market garden style that you were grown and to where you started to incorporate, or why you started to incorporate trees into your practice or where you started to see those benefits.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I guess, like probably most gardeners, most growers, I'd always had some trees as part of the mix. So you know, I'd always had some apple trees, some fruit trees and I loved you know, I always loved working with them. Pruning is is probably one of my favorite gardening tasks. I really enjoy the, the, the sort of slightly meditational state of it and but you know, you still got to think about it a little bit and it's quite creative. But I hadn't really, I think, considered what the trees were doing to the system.
Speaker 2:I'd seen them in isolation, and it was probably about 15 years ago, when I first came across the concept of agroforestry and started looking a bit more at, sort of, I guess, all the benefits that trees bring, both to the world at wide and to the garden or the field itself, that I started to investigate this and I mean, god, it's massive topic. So I'm still so ignorant, you know, it's so one of the classic things of the more you learn, the more you realize quite a little. You know, yeah, um, but it, yeah, it's extraordinary and we're we're scratching the surface and and I guess the other big driver for me is around you know how we cope with climate change, the mitigation to some extent through, you know, carbon sequestration, all of that stuff. But actually, more urgently for me is just how we keep producing food in the face of really uncertain climate, in the face of really uncertain climate, and and trees buffer us at both extremes of hot, cold, windy, wet. You know, all of that stuff they help to, they help to keep us going, I guess.
Speaker 1:Um, so yeah, that's, that's what's driving me really yeah, I I said that this episode will be will be kind of linked I I covered an episode a couple of weeks ago, so we've three week here in ireland coming up, which is it's a quite an important it's when this podcast goes live. It's actually the week that this podcast goes live and I was at a conference a couple of weeks ago and henrik showman was was there chatting about trees and the urban environment and you know the, the cooling effect and the attenuation of water and all of those things and it was really interesting. And from a gardening stroke, market garden stroke, agriculture perspective, there's huge benefit in trees and I guess, like, as you said, it's a huge and complex topic and we won't necessarily get into too much of the technical data. But what is the benefits of trees in the garden d?
Speaker 1:And it's funny because I live on a farm here and if I was only walking through the fields the other day and we have quite mature hedgerows and the fields are quite yellow at this time not yellow but they're. They're not as green as they will, as they will be once the temperatures rise in a few weeks time, but all along under the trees is just lush, it looks lush and there's that element of it. Then, in times when we get little periods of drought, which we are getting with a little bit more frequency again, if you look under the trees, right directly under the tree, might be a little bit burnt, but in, if you look under the trees, right directly under the tree, might be a little bit burnt, but in that root zone area it seems to be the grass is is greener than it is in the fields. So there's clearly you know this is my very basic information on it but there clearly is a benefit in having trees plants in that root zone. So what exactly is happening there? Why am I seeing that?
Speaker 2:So I think there's a few things we can talk about. So there's the soil, which is one thing, there's the shade and the effect that intercepting sunlight has on crops, and there's the shelter, and then there's also the influence that the trees have on water movement. So so maybe, if we start with, let's start with the shelter, maybe, and and the fact that if you're in the shelter of a tree, you're typically four or five degrees warmer than if you're in open ground. So immediately you've raised the temperature throughout your main growing season assuming it's a deciduous tree You've raised that temperature by four or five degrees. Now that might give you I don't know a couple of weeks each end of the season, potentially I don't know, a couple of weeks each end of the season, potentially. And particularly, what it does is it helps to warm up the soil a little bit early on so you can get stuff out earlier. But the other thing it does is it prevents physical damage. So particularly stuff like squash, for instance, which is really susceptible to wind in those early phases of establishment where they might just get blown about. In an open field where they're sheltered, they can get away quickly and grow. So you can have a significant impact on both length of season and yield, potentially, if you get it right. Um, and even stuff.
Speaker 2:Andy talks about um. So, andy, I co-wrote the book, the silver horticulture book with. He talks about, uh, the damage that happens to a lot of leafy crops. So for him you know, one of his big markets are, you know, chards, lettuce, spinach, all of that sort of stuff, and if he gets a nasty wind across it can shred the whole crop. So, although in theory it's still edible, actually it's unsalable. So, although in theory it's still edible, actually it's unsalable. So for him it's a really important part of protecting it. You know the physical bit of the crop as well. So that's shelter.
Speaker 2:So then the shade. So I guess we've got a bit of an assumption maybe in our heads that we need full sun for our vegetable crops. You know it's sort of in our mind. We think, yeah, it's just get out in the field, aren't they with full sun. But actually most, or a lot of vegetable crops don't need or want full sun, and they particularly don't want full sun when it's 35 degrees, which we are now getting sort of fairly regularly. So, particularly leafy crops, they can make do with maybe two to four hours of sunlight a day and they can be in semi-shade the rest of the time and actually things like lettuce really like being in the shade in in the hot summers.
Speaker 2:So so, re-evaluating in a way what your crop needs in terms of sun, but then also thinking about how the the sun moves across the sky and where the shade is falling at different times a day and at different times a year, you can start to be quite clever about how you plan your rotations and how near to the tree you put them.
Speaker 2:So something like, uh, garlic, for instance, you could plant almost under the tree because it's quite shallow rooted and it's done most of its growing by the time the tree's coming into leaf, whereas other stuff you know, tomatoes or sweet corn or something you'd want further away, where it is going to get full sun. So yeah, so you can, sort of you can play around a little bit like that. I mean, the water is probably a bit more obvious, you know it, when you've got tree roots that are breaking up the soil and the helping infiltration and all of that stuff, then it, you know, just allows you to dry out more quickly. So again, particularly in early spring, if the soil is a bit damp. If you can get it dry a bit quickly you can get, you know, maybe a couple of weeks extra season, but also just it stops it getting clogged and wet and claggy. So particularly if you've got heavy sores it can really help um sorry, go on yeah yeah, so and they're.
Speaker 1:They're the sort of, I suppose, what you'd call the the obvious, the obvious ones, and I guess there is some benefits. Um, I've had jeff lawnfels on the podcast in the past and he he has spoke about, you know, bacteria transfer and root exudates and and and so on and of which I don't understand. I'm not. I'm not a scientist, but I do understand when there's benefit in something and you can see it and but I don't understand what's actually happening there. But clearly there is. There is benefit because if you look, you know, in a, in a forest, in a forest or in a, an edible forest setting, you're getting really, really good plant health typically, you're getting your crops do extremely well, less disease and so on. So there's, there's something happening there around that as well. Are you up to sort of elaborate on that or is that the sort of no?
Speaker 2:no, absolutely well, I mean, it is a mind-fooling one say I'm certainly I am, I'm no sort of scientist either, but but there's, you know, we know that diverse systems are more productive. Monocultures are, you know, they're efficient from a, from a human labor point of view, but that's about it. They don't work. They don't work as as self-sustaining natural systems. So the more diversity we can include, the better. Which goes back to into your introductory point about the forest, food forests, and you know, those multi-layered things which in in a garden you can certainly create. When we're, when we're, growing. Commercially it's harder to do that because you've still got to get machinery in and sort of, you know, make a living. But the um, I guess what's happening your your point about the exudate. So it's a. Typically, a plant only uses maybe half to two-thirds of what it produces in terms of food for its own benefit. The rest it pushes out through the roots to feed soil organisms and exchange those that sugar effectively for other minerals that it needs. So it's, it's desperately trying to encourage all of these soil organisms to come and live around its roots so that they can all live and breed and exchange all of these um, all of these nutrients and and a tree will be there permanently. Um, so, so often we'll put in a green manure crop, and that you know we'll do that job a bit, but then we dig it in, um, and we disturb the soil and we break up all of that habitat.
Speaker 2:And one of the things that's particularly beneficial about planting trees is you create the habitat for fungi. So fungi typically hate being disturbed. They don't like being dug, they don't like being sprayed, they don't like anything, they just like to be left alone under the tree. And basically, as soon as you plant a tree, then you're not doing anything under it, you know. Typically you leave it because otherwise you're going to damage the tree roots. So you're creating this perfect habitat for fungi and then the fungi is able to transport nutrients from further away.
Speaker 2:So, whereas a lot of the things like bacteria and nematodes and you know, those other little creatures that are living immediately around the roots, they're relatively immobile. They can move around a little bit, most of them, but and obviously things like worms can travel a bit more, but they won't be traveling 50 meters or 100 meters. Whereas fungi hyphae can grow well I mean, the biggest one is whatever, five miles wide, isn't it, you know, but typically they can all link up with each other and they feed into roots, and that's how trees talk to each other often is through these fungal networks. So the more you can create bits of your garden that are undisturbed and linked to other bits, then that's going to be beneficial to the soil health.
Speaker 2:And bear in mind also, the trees are kind of constantly producing leaves, dropping leaves, building soil, organic matter, building soil. So as long as your tree isn't so vigorous and big that it's out competing everything, so clearly there are going to be situations where you can't grow stuff under a big oak or something. Yeah, um. But but if you get the balance right and you understand how the dynamics work, then you can really work at your advantage yeah, and I presume your your wood, your book on the wood chip handbook.
Speaker 1:That's sort of fallen into the same category, like because on the face of it you're thinking how can you write a full book about wood chip? Not the first person to have asked me that, but I suppose it's when you start to get into, you know what is happening with the fungal activity in the soil, that you can branch this out, and I guess that's what's happened. I haven't seen this book, so maybe tell us a little bit about it, and is it the kind of segue that we think it is here?
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, absolutely. And what got me into wood chip actually was was planting trees initially. So so alongside the work I do at the soil association, I work, uh, for helen browning on her farm. So helen's the chief exec of the soil association but she also has a 1500 acre farm in wiltshire, um, and I sort of manage her agroforestry planting for it, and we were using a lot of wood chip to mulch and basically the more mulch I put on, the better it was and the quicker the trees established.
Speaker 2:And and then it sort of coincided with with being involved in a few other projects one with the organic research center and, um, ian tolhurst tolly, looking at, uh, ramiel wood chip and spreading ramiel wood chip. So, spreading ramial wood chip, so that's the kind of the small stuff, the stuff from branches less than seven centimetres in diameter, and spreading that on soil and seeing the effect. And then we also ran an innovative farmers field lab looking at wood chip compost for propagation. So suddenly all these sort of stuff was coming up going god, wood chips more than just spreading on paths, yeah, um, so so that got me really interested.
Speaker 2:And then, and then one of the other things I've started looking at. So so, unless you want just to grow fruit trees which are great, obviously I love fruit trees but once you get into you know bigger settings and farm settings not everybody wants to grow fruit trees but but sort of uh, older, that sort of thing where you maintain the height of your trees by coppicing on a two, three, four, whatever you know year cycle, um, and, and so you're not, uh, you, you reduce the risk basically of having this massive tree, that's, that's sucking out nutrients and competing with your crops by by controlling it, the height of it. And then, if you start doing that, you go what am I going to do with all of this material that I'm getting from this coppice thing? And so then you start going well, actually, yes, you can chip it and then use it for all of these other things around the garden. That's really useful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so in that scenario because I'm just thinking from an agroforestry point of view here you were saying you spread wood chips on the land. So obviously you know, in a garden setting, as you mentioned, we've all seen it in the footpaths and there's the obvious benefit there. You know you do see the mycelium building up and you know it is adding. Over time it breaks down and that becomes nutrients and so on. So in that setting we all understand the benefits of it. Are you saying that you know the likes of these chips would be spread on the land, as in grazing pastures, or is it just in food production beds or is it?
Speaker 2:You can do it anywhere really. So the idea with this is because the smaller wood has a higher ratio of uh nutrients, nitrogen and other and other nutrients and amino acids and things to carbon. So old wood typically is mostly carbon, you know. The young wood has got more bark and bark is where all the sort of exciting stuff is in the tree. So so you, you reduce the risk of nitrogen locking by using the young wood and the idea is that you can spread it straight on the soil.
Speaker 2:So either I mean tolly typically does it on his green manure phase of his rotation, which reduces, you know, any particular risk of locking up. But but actually it doesn't seem to be much risk if it's really young, um, and it's, and it's not like a mulch, it's like a sprinkling um, so it's. So it's a, it's a soil amendment, it's almost like a soil health amendment. So rather than thinking of it as a as a mulch or as a fertilizer, it's more a sort of health booster really and particularly helps with fungal populations and pushing the sort of fungi-bacterial ratio a bit more towards the fungi. So that's the concept really.
Speaker 1:But yeah, and you're spreading that fresh or is it composted for a period of time?
Speaker 2:first, so the ramial, in theory you can just compost fresh and we're certainly looking. So Helen's farm is is mainly a livestock farm. There's not really much horticulture there, but but we're looking at potentially coppicing some of it and just literally spreading it from the wood chipper out into the pasture. Um, you know, maybe if it ends up a bit too piled up we might have to run over it with some tines or something. But, um, yeah, you could potentially do that. But equally, you can compost it as well. And I would certainly say if you've got older wood chip from bigger branches, I would recommend probably composting it before you add it. And certainly if you're growing stuff that's got really shallow roots or it's a really young plant, then I would definitely recommend composting it and and certainly not digging in, because that's when you get some of the problems. Um, but for, no dig beds.
Speaker 1:If you use really nice composted wood chip, it's, it's great, works really well yeah and so and it technically in in a scenario like that, then if you're using this really young, really small chippings, you can do like a chop and drop effect, so you're doing the same thing as chop and drop you're you're putting it straight onto your beds in a thin enough layer? I guess that you're not.
Speaker 2:You're not putting a big layer of it well, it again, it depends on what you're doing. So so I mean, I actually that's exactly what I've been doing this morning in my garden is I've pruned, pruning a shrub, uh and yeah, just laying it actually quite thickly underneath that shrub, because that's going to be fine. If I was about to plant out my little vegetable seedlings there, then I'd want it a lot thinner or or I'd compost it. So it's a little. It depends a little bit on what you've got growing there.
Speaker 1:That's the wood chip handbook. Silver horticulture I know we've talked a little bit about it but it's and it's something that's used or used relatively, I suppose, across. I've seen it going back 30 years ago in horticultural college. It was used to a certain extent but I don't think it was. It was more from the point of view of wind barrier than you know. They certainly weren't thinking about it from a soil health point of view or from any other point of view at that point in time. But it was. You know it was starting to become popular. Have you seen, you know, a switch in the last few years to more silver? Silver horticulture, stroke agroforestry I think it's starting.
Speaker 2:I mean, I guess one of the things I hadn't really realized when I started all of this was it's an ancient, ancient system. Really, it's probably how we started farming, and in parts of the world like South America and Southeast Asia, it's still the norm for a lot of horticultural crops, and so I think, certainly in the UK and Ireland, I guess as well, you know, it's just something we've forgotten about and we're rediscovering it, um, and, and we know, I guess, a bit more about the science of why it works as well, which is, which is nice, um, but it's yeah, and and there's a there, there are a few pioneering growers that have been doing it for a while, people like alan scofield, um, ian tolhurst, martin brag down in in devon, um, the you know, the wakelands, uh, agroforestry over in suffolk. So there's, there's people that have been trying it for probably 20, 30 years, but they're relatively few. But I think in the last certainly three, four years, there's been increasing interest. I think.
Speaker 2:And certainly, you know, andy and I wrote the book mainly because when we were developing systems, we just couldn't find any information. So we thought, well, probably other people would find this useful as well, and Andy always says I wish I'd had this book when I started designing mine. I'd have done it all differently. So is he farming himself now? Yeah, so he's. He's a grower at uh Abbey Home Farm near Cirencester, which, uh, I can't now remember exactly how many acres he's on, but he's got about two acres of glass and polytunnel and then I think about another 15 acres of field veg and stuff.
Speaker 1:So, um, so yeah, and he's using a silver, silver horticulture system and what he is, yeah, what trees is he using? Is it a combination of nut trees, fruit trees?
Speaker 2:yeah, so, fruit, some nuts and some coppice those would be his main ones again. You know, in a way, like I talked about earlier, it's about, uh, he doesn't want really big trees. Uh, they've they. He supplies into. They have this incredible farm shop on their site which basically supplies everything. They do pretty much everything on the farm dairy poultry, eggs, you know they, they have their own uh, bakery, just about everything, um so. So here's all of his um, fruit and veg goes through the shop, um, so that's his main driver, and they were buying in apples.
Speaker 2:So I thought, well, you know, definitely we should be growing more apples, um so so. But equally, you know, he wanted, uh, you know, potentially to cut bean poles and pea sticks. And you know, one of the things we talk about is how, how you can become more self-sufficient, and you know whether you're a gardener or a professional grower. If you look at the things that you're buying in to make your garden work, actually a lot of them you could be growing yourself. Yeah, um, you know, even in a relatively small garden, um, you can be growing some of this stuff. Um so, things like, you know, wood chip to make propagation compost, or, you know, even if you just had one hazel coppice in the corner of your garden, you know that could provide quite a lot. So it's thinking about thinking about sort of what you're spending money on, I guess, and whether there's a tree that will, that will save you money by doing it yourself yeah, hazel.
Speaker 1:The hazel, as you know, as as plant supports and so on, is is brilliant. I've, um, I've used willow a little bit, but obviously it starts to regrow again, so that's not always exactly that's not always ideal, but, um, yeah, hazel.
Speaker 1:Hazel is a really good one, and you mentioned wood chip compost for propagating and this is obviously one that's quite, quite a hot topic over the last number of years because we've gone away. Here in ireland we're still using peat um in a propagation and I think it's pretty much gone in the uk at this stage yes, yes, it's definitely on its way out.
Speaker 1:But I suppose the biggest challenge for peat-free has always been from the point of view of sowing seeds. It's to get those EC levels stable enough to safely and consistently germinate seeds and grow on seedlings. That's that. That's been the challenge. What, what's the? How do you make a germination compost, seed sowing compost with, with woodchip? How, what's that process?
Speaker 2:well, in theory it's very simple. So you literally compost it for anything between 18 months and three years, um, and sieve it and then add something like a bit of perlite or vermiculite or biochar, so something that just sort of helps a little bit with the, with the drainage, um, and certainly the trial we did with tolly uh, we sowed leeks and, uh, cabbage I think I'm saying cabbage, now I can't remember it was lettuce, but anyway, we sowed leeks and cabbage I think I'm saying cabbage, now I can't remember if it was lettuce, but anyway and it was compared against the sort of leading peat-based commercial compost and they basically performed the same and in fact the leeks were even slightly healthier in the field, although we're not quite sure why. So that was kind of impressive.
Speaker 2:And it is literally he piles wood chip that he gets from tree surgeons in a windrow, he adds a bit of his packhouse waste, a bit of the old sort of veg cuttings and all of that. He turns it a couple of times over the year and then he sieves. Then he takes that, takes a bit of it and sort of composts it further for another six, 12 months and then sieves it and that's it and it seems to work. Now, we haven't obviously tested it on every crop, and what you're using for the feedstock, I'm sure will have some bearing on the quality, on the quality, um, but it does seem that, uh, you know, if you leave it to compost long enough, then some of those variables will even out.
Speaker 1:Um, so it just seems to be.
Speaker 2:It's all about time, then it's yeah, but but the process is simple. I mean, I I think you could literally fill a. You know, fill some plastic bags with wood chip, leave them in the corner of your garden for three years and then come back and sieve them, and it would.
Speaker 1:I think it would work yeah yeah, um so yeah, because that's that is the biggest downfall of peat-free compost. To be fair, it's. It's just either inconsistent or poor germination, you know, because the obviously the ec levels are just not stable, whereas something like wood chip that has been given that period of whatever three years is, yeah, it's going to be again. It's going to be like what you'll find on a on a florist for a forest floor if you scratch back the surface.
Speaker 2:It's going to be that type of a yeah, and I think I think one of the main problems for a lot of the commercial people free brands is they've got this time pressure, they've got to keep things moving and they can't make any money if they have it sitting around too long composting and so they rush the process to get stuff to market um, and so, as you say, a lot of it isn't really suitable and some of it's not even suitable for putting on, but but I think that is, I think it's getting better and that you know there are an increasing number of um brands that are delivering much better.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, it is improving. Yeah, and funny here probably the leading one, the leading brand here, has quite a percentage of Cocoa Cire in it and I really have my doubts on that, considering that we live in ireland and like the the sustainability or the eco-friendliness of that when it's come from the other side of the world. It might make sense if you're quite close by to its source, but I'm not so sure here.
Speaker 2:I really do question cairn in compost here, anyway, for sure yeah, well, yeah, and I think if you can make it from something that you can grow, you know where you are. That definitely makes more sense to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah for sure. Yeah, you mentioned soil health and as part of what you were saying there, you you chatted about adding biochar. So I know soil health is something you talk a lot about and it's something that's quite you know. I would regularly cover soil health and related topics on the podcast and again would call it the cornerstone of growing food particularly, and pretty much any gardening is. The cornerstone is your soil, what you know when we come on to the soil association in a minute. But how do you go about building a healthy soil in your opinion? So you mentioned biochar, you mentioned spreading wood chip, any other kind of good tips for building soil health?
Speaker 2:It's mainly about reducing the amount you do to it, to do as little as you can, which is why no dig systems work and they're challenging commercially to to get enough material and they're quite labor intensive. But in a garden situation, you know, I mostly I would recommend no dig.
Speaker 2:When I, when I started 30 years ago, there were still people double digging and I, even at the time when I really didn't know that very much at all, I thought this just seems like madness. Why? Why are we doing this? It's invented just by someone who wants to, you know, dig, but anyway. So so I think I think reducing the amount you you do to a soil is obviously crucial. Keeping it covered at all times, ideally with something living, is also, you know, really important. And building soil, organic matter, so that you know whether that's compost, composted wood chip, but you know, building up the, not just the percentage of organic matter in your soil, and that will you know. So most soils will have a limit to what. You can do that and then still maintain a balance. But you can also build the depth of your soil by increasing that biological activity, and a lot of the carbon is part of a cycle. So it's not necessarily sitting there doing nothing, it's sort of in and out, but the more active generally, the more active your soil is, the healthier it's. It's sort of in and out, but the but the more active generally, the more active your soil is, the healthier it's going to be um, and the biochar is interesting. I mean, I'm, I'm not, uh, a biochar evangelist. I would say, um, but I am, I am, I've done a few bits of trials with it and I am really interested and I think it's got some real potential uh, particularly in um, in really light sandy soils and in tunnels and glass houses and pots where you get quite a wide extreme of temperature and moisture. So it helps, it really helps to act as a buffer, um, because it's it's effectively like this sponge it holds, holds on to water and nutrients, so it makes the most efficient use of what you've got.
Speaker 2:There's also a theory that a lot of plants have evolved to respond to the presence of charcoal. So if you've got a forest fire, the things that grow quickest are the ones that are going to be successful. So there's a theory that they're, uh, naturally evolved to grow more quickly when there's charcoal in the soil. And that my first, I guess what first got me interested in.
Speaker 2:I did a, just a trial on my own with biochar. It was a coir based compost actually, but some of it had biochar in and some of it didn't, and all of the trays that had biochar in germinated a day earlier and were greener. Well, um, and you look at it, just go, wow, I can see the difference. Now that didn't necessarily mean they grew any better once I planted them out, but but I just thought, wow, there's something in that, so. So that got me interested.
Speaker 2:I've since done quite a lot of trials and and certainly where we've used it at Helen's in the fertile heavy clay I've seen actually no benefit at all. Particularly I don't think it's done any harm and I'm sure it's sequestered some carbon in there. But from a sort of crop and soil health point of view I'm not sure we've benefited much and obviously there's a cost to it. But I think, yeah, I think there are situations where it can can help and and certainly you know, I know there are advocates out there that believe it's sort of a massive potential just in terms of drawing carbon out of the atmosphere and sequestering it long term in the soil.
Speaker 2:I guess I'm nervous about unintended consequences with some of that stuff where we go yeah, let's throw lots of biochar in the soil and then, you know, we don't really know what it'll do in all situations, probably.
Speaker 1:Um, but yeah and there is a lot of. You know, here in ireland there's, there's a huge bio biochar facility after being built and they're able to produce huge amounts of material and and you know they're. They're talking about different applications for that now at this stage and so there is yeah, there's a lot of talk about biochar at the moment. From my perspective, I have used biochar in not a very scientific way but in created, no, a new no dig garden a couple of years ago and all the beds got an application of biochar produced here in ireland and dr karen o'hallan and she inoculates it with beneficial bacteria. So it's a little bit of a souped up biochar, for want of a better word.
Speaker 1:And on applying it to all beds um, sorry, not all beds, because I was trying to see was there differences? Um, by applying it on on the beds in year one. So all these were were newly created no dig beds and there was no obvious difference in year one, uh, with the you know in the setup year. But there was definitely benefits, obvious benefits in year two and year three, where you're only putting the really light layer of compost in the further years, and I thought there was an obvious benefit there, twofold better growth, without a doubt, on the beds with biochar, but healthier plants. They just looked a little bit greenerer, slightly more vigorous on the ones that were, that were that where the biochar was applied.
Speaker 1:So I've since I've since put it on all beds.
Speaker 2:But it wasn't obvious initially, but after year two, year three, it was quite clear, quite clear yeah, and I think, I mean, I think systems, soil systems take a while to react to any change, which is why, yeah, long term trials and observations are so crucial, because things happen slowly, or you know, or then surprisingly, five years down the line or something. Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker 1:And the Silo Association, so obviously a hugely trusted body in the UK and here in Ireland as well. So tell us a little bit about you know for people that don't know, tell us a little bit about the association, what it does, what its you know. Its mission statement is, I guess.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we're a charity. We were founded in 1946 by a group of scientists, farmers and health workers, so the sort of central mission, in a way, has always been to promote and support that link between healthy soil, healthy plants, healthy animals, healthy people and a healthy planet. In the 70s we were one of the organizations that helped to develop the organic standards and we set up at that time a certifying body as well. So we own a certification company, which is how a lot of people know us, and we certify organic farms and businesses. We also help to set up FSC, the timber mark, so we certify that worldwide, and then some other ethical standards as well. So we do that. And then we do own another company now, which is Soil Association Exchange, which was set up four or five years ago, I think, which the aim of that is to help farmers to monitor and benchmark their environmental and social outputs and then potentially to tap into funding to help support it.
Speaker 2:I don't work for either of those companies. I work for the charity. I work in our farming and land use team, work in our um farming and land use team, um, and what we do is, uh, quite broad um, but primarily it's, uh, it's around things like supporting farmers to, um, I mean, I sometimes I don't think this is the official way we talk about it anymore, but I quite like it as a way of describing it. So so we work with, uh, farmers, our existing organic licensees, we, we work with them to help them you know farm even better or to access new markets or whatever you know around that to sort of help them. We work with farmers to encourage them to certify as organic. So obviously we believe organic certification is one, one way to benefit our charitable aims. So we would like to see more organic licensees, whether that's with the Soil Association or other licensing bodies. And then we also now increasingly work with farmers to make them sort of in inverted commas more organic. So we know that a lot of farmers will never want to be certified organic and that's fine. But actually a lot of them now are interested in things like cover crops and rotations and building soil, organic matter and particularly my area of agroforestry.
Speaker 2:You know, I would say I work mostly with farmers that are not certified organic, which I quite enjoy. Enjoy. To be honest, I don't enjoy, uh, what's the word? So silos, I think.
Speaker 2:I think we all benefit much more from talking to each other and learning from each other um, and then and then we also do as well as the work with farm. So we run things like we run events. We've got a ag forestry show coming up, for instance, in september, which would be, uh, you know, great if any of your listeners wants to come over to uh, to england and visit um. But but we, you know, we run events, we run webinars, we produce fact sheets, we we visit farms, we talk to people on telephone and emails, all of that sort of stuff. We then also work, uh in policy. So we do have a policy team, but a lot of the people in my team, so there's something like 23 people now in our farming and land use team. So we've got a really wide range of expertise sort of really around all farming and forestry um. So so we help to support our policy team, um to influence uh where we can, to influence government policy, and that would be sort of across the, the four devolved nations in the uk, um and uh. And then we also get involved in some of the campaigning work that the charity does um the.
Speaker 2:I mean there is there's always a little bit of a tension with with some of our work, because we have a lot of um public members, um who are who tend to push hard for change, and then we have a lot of farmer members who, while they're all very up for change, it just takes a bit longer sometimes, and so our campaigning team are often trying to sort of push a more radical message and then, sort of, our team is going have you thought about how that's going to go down with the farmers?
Speaker 2:So that's quite interesting. You know, go down with the farmers, so that's, that's quite interesting. Um, and I guess then the final bit, which I get less involved in, is we have quite a big um food, uh strand of work. So do a lot of work with schools, um, hospitals and things like that, um looking at, uh, supporting how to change diet and eating habits and things like that. So so, yeah, quite wide range. We're an unusual organization that we we span sort of pretty much everything which, as I said, it does create tensions but it also, I think, gives us an unusual perspective on things.
Speaker 1:You know, we're not, we are an environmental organization, but we're also a farming organization and we're a campaigning organization and we're a food, so we do a lot of different stuff um which throws its challenges, but it's quite exciting to work within, so yeah, I could imagine the challenges, but I guess it's also it's also probably, you know, a good angle because, as you rightly said, the, the people who are campaigning, typically the, the public, are pushing for certain outcomes and certain bans and certain changes, and on the on the backside of that, then you have farming farmers who are running a business, have to make a living and change, as you rightly said, is, is and can be slow, because they have to, they have to need, they have to know that this change is not going to impact the bottom line. That's essentially it um and and so. But you're in a unique, unique position in that you can navigate those two, those two kind of different pillars well, I hope so.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure we always get it right, but I mean, actually, the pete discussion is a classic case of that where, as an, as as an organization, we're, you know, we're right behind a ban and we, you know, I would say we've been over the decades, we've probably been one of the most proactive voices in reducing and removing peat. We've got to make sure that there are the products out there in sufficient quality and quantity that when our commercial growers use them, they're not losing an entire crop because that's their livelihood down the drain. So we can't do it at such speed that people go out of business. But equally, if you don't do it fast enough, then nothing ever gets done. But equally, if you don't do it fast enough, then nothing ever gets done.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, like here in Ireland, I think it's that's we've a strong tradition and heritage in peat in lots of ways. You know, going to the bog to cut turf is is a you know, was a big thing here in Ireland. It's probably less so now, but it is still still here. And, you know, a couple of years ago it was the clamor to, to, to ban peat products from from growing and while it's very hard to argue with that, the products just weren't there to, you know, to replace them essentially today or tomorrow. And and as I said earlier that one of the products that was being touted as being, you know, know, being a replacement was coir, and I just don't get that Personally. I think it is, you know, probably if you're right beside it at its source, it makes sense, but not when you're, you know, on the other side of the world.
Speaker 1:in my opinion, so, it's always a tricky one. Yeah, and yeah, it's a. It's always a tricky one yeah and yeah.
Speaker 2:There's no point replacing one environmentally damaging product with another one.
Speaker 1:Is this yeah, yeah, yeah, and we we have some kind of strange scenarios now where there's less harvesting going on on the island of ireland but there's still a lot of peat coming in from other regions, and so while, so while we could say that we're not harvesting as much peat for horticulture, there's still probably as much being used Right, so outsourced it. It's just coming from somewhere else and I don't think that's that's certainly not the right approach either. So it's always a tricky one. Final question you mentioned earlier on you were chatting about food and how that was one of your biggest concerns going forward. Believe that you know regenerative, uh, organic farming can sort of take up the capacity that that's required?
Speaker 2:I think it's the only way we're going to do it, because I think the other systems will fail. There were some of them already failing, um, and it's always the problem with the sort of big conventional farming system is it works really well when everything's right. So if you get a great year with just the right amount of rain, just the right amount of sun, um, and you, you know you can get out in the right time and plant the crops and and harvest them, then you'll get really big yields. But when anything goes wrong, the systems are vulnerable. So if you get a drought, they don't grow. If you get flooded, they don't grow. If you get a hurricane, they don't grow, whereas systems that are lower yielding but more resilient will typically will deliver most years. So you get this.
Speaker 2:There's been research looking at overall yield and profitability of systems and a sort of high-yielding intensive system, high-input system. You'll have higher highs but you'll have lower lows and the risk of doing it is therefore higher. To get those higher yields you need to be spending a lot of money, whereas a low input or sustainable, you know, looking for that sort of maximal sustainable output is to me, makes a lot more sense, and certainly in mixed vegetable systems. I think we're quite vulnerable to some of this stuff and I think we have to be protecting it. So for me, a big part of it is about resilience and we are going. You know, we're already seeing disruption in some of the supply chains.
Speaker 2:I think.
Speaker 2:You know I'm a very optimistic person by nature, but I think we're we've only just begun to see the tip of some of the the problems that we're going to get, and actually ireland and the uk are quite well placed where we're.
Speaker 2:You know we're going to see probably a lot of wind and maybe a lot of rain at certain times, but but actually we're not probably going to be hit as badly as a lot of places, um, so so I think we need to prepare ourselves, I guess, and prepare our systems to be able to do that. Um, and I think there's there's certainly I was reading recently there's a meta-analysis of horticultural agroforestry systems. I think they reviewed something like 277 studies that had been done and, if I remember right, 245 of them showed increased productivity, typically 20 or 30% more productive, but some of them were sort of one and a half times as, two times as productive, um, and so I think we know this stuff works, but it is a bit complex and you've got to get your head around the design of it, um, but there's no question that it works and, to me, if we're gonna, if we are going to continue to produce good quantity, a good quality food, we have to, we have to look at it.
Speaker 1:So yeah, for sure, and it's definitely gaining traction here. There's a lot of people adapting principles you know those type principles and yeah, it's. It's something that's definitely growing in popular popularity and yeah, hopefully we'll continue to do so. So, yeah, it's uh been a really interesting chat. There's loads, uh, there's loads there. We could still probably talk for another few hours. You know, there's different avenues, different potential things we could talk about, but it's yeah, it's been a really interesting chat. Uh, where can people find you? I know all your books pretty much online, but I you have your own website, so uh, yeah, so uh, ben raskinuk is the website.
Speaker 2:Uh, obviously, solid association's got a great website with lots of resources. Um, and I think my details are on there as well.
Speaker 1:I'm on, you know all the instagram, blue sky, facebook, bloody blah all of that stuff so yeah, no, ben, it's been really interesting chat, loads there, as I said that there's lots more we could we could talk about. So, uh, yeah, really really interesting chat and thank you very much for coming on. Master, my garden podcast pleasure.
Speaker 1:Thanks, I've really enjoyed it so that's been this week's episode. A huge thanks to ben for coming on. Yeah, there's so much there you could. You could get into the owners. There's such obvious benefits with incorporating, you know, with incorporating trees into your garden, setting into your market garden, if that's what you're doing from a gardener's perspective which I know many of you you are the soil health is a huge one. So we've spoke about it before, but I think you can clearly see that that soil health is what it's all about. If you have good health, then you're going to have good crops, you're going to grow good fruit and vegetables for your family. So, yeah, really interesting chat and that's been this week's episode. Thanks for listening and until the next time, happy gardening, thank you.